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The Colonel That Saved the World

Oppenheimer created the nuclear bomb, and Colonel Petrov saved us from it

Nadine Bjursten
ILLUMINATION

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Stanislav Petrov (Russian: Станислав Петров), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

With the film Oppenheimer taking home seven Oscars, it is worth remembering another figure who instead of “[becoming] death, “the Destroyer of Worlds,” was responsible for saving ours.

It is September 26, 1983, and Cold War tensions are at a breaking point. The Soviets have just shot down a stray South Korean passenger jet, killing all 269 passengers, including U.S. congressman Larry McDonald (D-Ga.). The ailing Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, is on edge. He is convinced the U.S. will launch a surprise first strike as are others in the Kremlin and the KGB. President Ronald Reagan has been escalating his rhetoric, referring to the country as an “evil empire.” The KGB had picked up 292 “signs of tensions” from the West. A NATO exercise includes B-52s for the first time. Pershing II nuclear-armed missiles are being deployed to West Germany and Great Britain in striking distance of Russia.

In the small town of Serpukhov-15, a short train trip from where Leo Tolstoy was born, Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, says goodbye to his wife and children. The brief autumn has arrived to the region, with trees erupting in deep red, orange, and yellow. This…

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